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This tutorial will explain the steps to create a lava gaming board. These same steps can be used to create many other types of terrain too. Sorry if it is a little long. I figured more detail was better then less.

Edit: added estimated costs of materials and board "standardizing".
What you will need:

Dow foam insulation. This can be found at most construction supply depots. It comes in blue or pink sheets. It comes in 2’x8’ sheets, so you will need 2 of them.($28 each)

3X 2’x4’x 1ï¿½” pre-cut plywood sheets. These can be purchase at any Home Depot type store.($4 each)

Heated wire foam cutter and Hot Knife.($15 for the wire cutter)

1 or 2 tubes of subfloor glue.($3 each)

1 or 2 tubes of ACRYLIC latex caulking.($3 each)

1 caulking gun.($8)

1 plastic tarp to work on. ($10)

1 long bladed utility knife or kitchen knife.(Free, as long as your wife does not catch you!)

1 bag of play yard sand. These can be purchase at any Home Depot type store.($2)

This is a tutorial on how to make your own storage trays for army transport storage cases.
Depending on the thickness you can make a tray for $3-$5 and you will be able to fit more miniatures in them because you can jigsaw the miniatures in to the most efficient usage of space, instead of staying in the predefined square grid that the army transport trays have.

What you will need:
-Enough sheets of cardboard to make the bottoms for the trays
...

Hey folks, here's how I make barbed wire. Step 1 - the materialsFind a suitably thin wire to use, in this case I took an old computer cable:Inside we find thin electrical cables, and in those are the very fine strings I use:You can use any thin string for this, in fact it you would be better of with a little thicker
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Imperial Guard City BuildingThis is an ideal way to make quick, effective structures that will give you more time to focus on painting your miniatures while having a half decent battlefield to play on. And the plus part...It’s cheap!
Materials:Mounting Card (3mm thick card found in art stores)Card (normal A4 card bought from any stationary store)Pit stick/Glue Stick (Found at you works stationary cupboard ;-)PVA Wood glue (found in your Dads shed)Masking tape
Tools:Stanley knife (Carpenters
...

I first did this step by step article as a forum post, I'd done a few other
base step by step projects and thought it would be a good idea to do the whole
display base concept, from building up the plinth all the way through to paints
and powders. The plinth used is about 5 cm across so plenty for space, and I'm
going to try build a cliff face, then put a bridge on top and have some water
underneath it, the idea being that the figure is charging across the bridge.
you won't get to see the figure itself though as I did this project as a
present and kept the figure out of the pictures for the surprise value.

First up is to get some basic sketches of the idea down. I tend to do this with
all my bases to some extent, and I have a pretty good idea of what I want as I
had a 5 hour drive home the other day with little else to think about apart
from avoiding the rest of the traffic. The initial sketches get me a feeling
for the sort of height I'm going to have, enough to fit some sort of support
work under the bridge, but not too tall, it is only going to be a 35mil figure.
So after a couple of initial sketches I spend a bit more care getting the
details down on my little blue note paper. Nice to keep notes on the stuff to
look back on later. These are done to the actual size, the top view sketched
onto an outline drawn around the plinth, and red marks added for possible
placement of the figures feet.

The Backing

One of the most important parts is to get smooth sides to the base, and one of
the best things I have found for this is thin plastic sheet. It's quite easy to
get hold of as lots of products come in plastic packaging these days. This time
I used part of a tube from some Italian chocolates a friend had bought to work,
so
...

Step 1) Make the cork rock, level the base with green stuff, assemble and check the placement of the mini and glue it down the cork:
Bart is just standing on the cork not glued down it is easier to paint them separately.

Step 2) Prime the base, Dry Brush the Rock and base coat the area for the water with Menoth White Highlight:

Someone posted to my Ork Battlewagon blog here (linky) on CMON asking if I was going to tell my secret to making the battle damage shown in the photos. Not really a "secret" but I looked around the articles section and didn't find one so I've decided to make it my my first article. How To Do Battle Damage.
I'll show how I do three most common types of damage: Cut Metal, Bullet Damage and Explosive Damage. Each uses slightly different tools and a way of thinking about how the damage got there. This tutorial will not show you how to paint this damage, only how to inflict it on the plastic itself. These technique should work as well on metals as well.
CUTTING/CONSTRUCTION DAMAGE.
This is most commonly seen on the edges of metal plates that have been hacked or torched off other metal things and bolted/welded/riveted on ork vehicles in a poor assemblage of armor plating, like this...

The physical technique for this is pretty easy, it's really an exaggerated form of adzing, or scraping. The trick is to really choke up on the Xacto and use your thumb to control the blade (like in the first photo).
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This article does not fall easily into any of the categories. It’s a little bit of modification and a little bit of scenario building. Blend together for a little pisky magic. This isn’t a “How to do it,” it’s a “How I did it”. I’ll also attempt to record my thought processes, including ideas I rejected. I hope there may be something here to inspire your own projects.

Paints used were Vallejo acrylics where I had the right colours or old tubes of various artists’ acrylics when I didn’t. Undercoat was a car spray undercoat. Photography was the best I could manage with my Pentax Optio 550 compact.

I write my own Advanced Dungeons and Dragons campaign, and I wanted our party of adventurers to meet some pixies, or, as they are known in Cornwall, pixys, pisgys or piskys. The nearest match to what I envisaged was Reaper’s #2445 “Fairies”. I waited four weeks for an English supplier who said he’d ordered them for me, then cancelled that, and ordered them direct, waiting another two
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Part 2 CoolMiniOrNot Picture Posting Etiquette and Tips
Okay hello again and welcome to the second part of my beginners articles.
So you've put your picture of your model up onto CMON but you keep seeing all of these fancy submissions with multiple views of the same image but from different angles, for example things like this:http://www.coolminiornot.com/152522You
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